


Only When You Fall

by withthebreezesblown



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 12:26:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7640095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withthebreezesblown/pseuds/withthebreezesblown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you had told Marian Hawke she would be the Champion of Kirkwall, she'd have laughed in your face. But then, there isn't much she <i>doesn't</i> laugh at. In life you laugh or you cry, and she'd twist herself til bones break to wring out the laughter. A story about either the courage or the craziness of trusting imperfect people in an imperfect world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only When You Fall

They’re on the boat from Gwaren to Kirkwall when it hits her. She doesn’t so much have a problem with small spaces, but she’s never been fond of crowds, and there are dozens of bodies packed into the hold, the smell of sick and fear crowding her in and pushing at her as surely as the bodies. Kitten’s enormous head resting on her ankle isn't unpleasant--she isn't sure the ship’s captain would have let the mabari onboard if they'd been accompanied by a sword any smaller than the monstrosity strapped to Carver’s back or an expression any less not-to-be-fucked-with than the one on Aveline’s face--but when one of the mass of bodies beside her shifts, brushing against her, the urge to blast her way past the man who says they are not allowed on the deck, jump ship, and swim the rest of the way to Kirkwall nearly overwhelms her. She is exhausted, and her patience is gone, and every touch of a stranger is a little more unendurable, and she finds herself reaching for Bethany’s hand to ground her, as though she can pull patience from the sister who always has enough to spare.

She’s only moved a matter of inches when she realizes her error and her hands stills on the worn, rutted wood beneath it.

Something rises up, choking her, keeping her from breathing. Well, that’ll be an improvement down here, surely, considering the smell. She wants to laugh at the thought, but that has no better luck breaking past the thing in her throat than breath.

That’s when a hand crosses the few inches left and settles over hers on the floor between them, larger than Bethany’s and even more roughly calloused than wielding a staff had left hers.

When she glances at Carver, his head is tilted back, leaning against the other side of the same beam she’s braced herself against, eyes closed. She wonders if he even realizes it isn’t Bethany’s hand he's taken.

Whether the comfort was meant for her or not, it loosens the stopper in her throat, and even though she can’t remember what was (only a little) funny a moment ago, even though _nothing is fucking funny_ right now, the laugh emerges. It’s bitter as tears, but it’s the only thing keeping them from coming, so she lets it continue.

Carver looks at her, face slowly flushing under a look of resentment, and she understands that he thinks she’s laughing at him. Before he can pull his hand away, she flips her palm and squeezes with everything she’s got, because she doesn’t know how else to tell him that, whatever this is, it isn’t mockery. She doesn’t know how else to beg him not to let go.

 

By the time she’s sold her soul to an elven smuggler to get into the city, and they’ve made their way to her uncle’s home in the section of the city called, “Lowtown,” which really should have just told her everything she needed to know to begin with, she doesn’t know how much more bad news she can stand. Because she’d understood that Gamlen had lost the Amell estate, but this? By the burned and blistered flesh of Andraste, _this is a shithole._

 

As it turns out, it isn’t much of an exaggeration to say she’s sold her soul to Athenril. The woman _always_ has something that needs doing, and it’s always a razor thin line she’s treading getting it done. When things work well, it’s just a fistful of fire in a shadowy back alley, and whoever she’s bullying will heed the look that says, “If you’re smart, you won’t make me show you what else I can do.” But eventually there’s always another scavenger who’s gotten by pressing their luck for too long who doesn’t know when to back down. The first investment Athenril makes in her is a pair of daggers with focusing crystals set into the hilt. She doesn’t have the speed or the agility to do much other than magic with them, but they’re decidedly less conspicuous than a proper staff, if not nearly as useful.There’s a synchronicity between the movements of a staff and the pulling of magic from the Fade that never quite matches up with the daggers that feel like dancing to a song whose rhythm is off.

Their entire year of service has passed before she gets the chance to deliver the locket that she had promised the witch who saved them outside of Lothering she would. Standing at the top of Sundermount with the half mad Dalish mage they’re to take with them when they leave, after the witch-dragon--or is it dragon-witch?--has flown away, she breathes deeply. The mountains smell different from the wilds where she grew up, but there’s a familiarity still in the smell of green and growing things, of earth and grass and leaves damp with dew, and after a year pent in a city where people practically wade through their own excrement--well, fresh and sweet doesn’t begin to do it justice.

She steps forward until her toes are at the very edge of the cliff where the dragon has just pushed away, a grin sliding over her face as the wind whips her laughter away from her. “So,” she glances over her shoulder at her brother, the dwarf who has been following them around since he convinced them all they need is enough money to invest in his brother’s Deep Roads expedition and they’ll come back set for life, and the elf who looks a little perpetually perplexed, as she raises her arms up in an imitation of wings, “do you think I could fly too?”

Merrill is tilting her head thoughtfully, and Varric is shouldering Bianca quickly like he might need his hands at any moment, but Carver has already stridden past both, hand wrapping around her upper arm as he glowers. “Why do you always have to be so ridiculous? Can we just get out of here already? This place makes my skin crawl.”

Before she’ll turn, for a moment, she counts on her brother to not let go, toes pushing forward and eyes closing as she leans into the rush of air.


End file.
